World Religious Leaders Meet on Ethnic Strife

By ALAN COWELL,

Published: February 10, 1994

ISTANBUL, Turkey, Feb. 9—
Religious leaders representing Jews, Muslims and Christians met today to pursue an end to ethnic strife from the Balkans to Central Asia "through the strength of spiritual might."

But the clerics' deliberations, intended in part to distance religious faith from the fierce nationalisms fueling ethnic strife, collided with precisely the same sensitivities and distinctions that have turned much of the former Soviet empire into a tinderbox.

A dispute between Turkish Muslim representatives and Istanbul's Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, participants said, delayed the signing of a so-called Bosporus Declaration at the conclusion of a two-day conference sponsored by the patriarchate and the New York-based Appeal of Conscience Foundation led by Rabbi Arthur Schneier.

A representative from the Armenian Orthodox Church was denied a visa by the Turkish authorities, and the local Turkish Armenian Orthodox minority boycotted the gathering because of a separate dispute over protocol.

Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian representatives from Croatia and Serbia did not attend, in part because the Serbs do not regard Istanbul as a neutral site; Muslim Turkey supports the Serbs' Muslim adversaries in Bosnia.

Even the declaration itself was named for the waterway, not the city around it, apparently because of sensitivities among the Greek Orthodox, who still call the city Constantinople, its name until 1930.

Still, the gathering in a luxury hotel overlooking the Bosporus brought together high-ranking religious figures, including Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church, Roger Cardinal Etchegaray of the Roman Catholic Church and religious figures from Romania, Albania, the United States, Georgia, Bulgaria, Russia and elsewhere.

All seemed intent on a theological version of networking, and some participants said that was the real achievement of the assembly. But the conference raised anew the question of how effective religion can be in promoting peace when religion itself is one of the forces defining national identity.

But, some participants said, the gathering reflected a profound concern, particularly in the former Soviet Union, that their faiths had become subservient to politicians seeking to use religion as a nationalistic rallying cry.

"We reject any attempt to corrupt the basic tenets of our faith by means of false interpretation and false nationalism," the Bosporus Declaration said.